


All That's Best of Dark and Bright

by alierakieron



Series: When the Hurlyburly's Done [2]
Category: Inception, Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Regency, F/M, M/M, Multi, Other, Regency, Romance, Sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-06 04:15:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alierakieron/pseuds/alierakieron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur has returned to England and is now living with Mr. and Ms. Eames. But is anything ever that easy? And how can you find your path when you can't  even find yourself? </p><p>The sequel to "The Hopeless Longing of the Day".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ariadne

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a few years, but this one just wouldn't quite leave me alone. So here you have it: the continuation of "The Hopeless Longing of the Day". A million and one thanks to @metonymy and @gollumgollum for the support, inspiration, and everything else.

When the woman walked into the room, all eyes were on her, and she rather looked as if she knew it. Gabriel Eames couldn’t tell if she was a professional or merely a bon vivant, but for the moment it didn’t particularly matter. She walked with a combination of bounce and sway that produced a hypnotizing effect with the rest of her assets, which were both very well assembled and well displayed in an emerald green silk gown. Her henna-red hair was piled loosely on top of her head, with curls escaping here and there to dance around her ears, and while her eyes were modestly down as she walked, but she shot him a sidelong glance as she passed his table that let him know that she both noticed and appreciated his interest.

 

An interest that had not gone unnoticed by other parties, as Gabriel would discover when he received a sharp kick to the shins.

Gabriel couldn’t restrain an “Owww,” and he looked reproachfully at his wife.

She looked back with wide eyes that were, he noted, genuinely confused. “What’s wrong?”

This small mystery was resolved when he looked across the table to his other companion. Arthur Foster Cobb glared back at him, his face the picture of righteous disapproval.

A look, Gabriel reflected, that Arthur was particularly good at.

Gabriel scowled and rubbed his shin, but dutifully returned his attention to his wife. “Nothing, love. You were saying?”

Ariadne hid her mirth behind the curve of her teacup. She had not missed her husband’s wandering gaze, but she had not let it distress her overmuch. Mrs. Eames knew that if Gabriel tugged at the leash from time to time, it was because he wanted to be certain it was still there.

 

Not that even that was a regular occurrence. Her marriage, unexpected as it was, had been a far greater success than, frankly, anyone could have predicted. Ariadne could not miss the historical irony: her mother had married far beneath her, expected bliss, and been bitterly disappointed. Ariadne had, by most reckonings, married far above expectations, expected little other than an escape from a stifling situation, and the results had been startling.

Less than 8 months ago her future had been… well, not bleak. Bleak was what her future had been at 7: life in poverty, early marriage to a sailor or else spending the rest of her youth looking after her mother and an ever increasing supply of younger siblings. Life with Mr. and Mrs. Cobb, who had taken her in, had not been bleak, and it had not been cruel. There was plenty to eat, and new, clean clothing (since she had to match Philippa if she was to be her companion), and free access to the library. But it had not been kind, either. She had been lonely, and soul-hungry. And now…

Right now, in fact, she was in the conservatory. It was snowing outside but warm and humid in here, and she was up to her wrists in soil.

“You’re tying it too tightly,” Yusuf said. “You’ll strangle it.”

Ariadne looked down at the orchid. He was right, but the symbolism of the activity was not lost on her. She smiled ruefully.

Her mien was not lost on her tutor. “What is it?”

“It’s like life, isn’t it,” she said.  “Too tight and it strangles. Too loose…”

“And it will break itself,” he finished. “You’re thoughtful today.”

“Yes, I suppose I am,” she said. “Life takes us such strange places that one sometimes feels like so much flotsam.”

“We have a choice in that,” Yusuf said. “You can be the leaf on the breeze, or you can sail with the winds.” When she smiled, he went on. “I know more about medicine than any man on this island, but a practice requires an apprenticeship. Which as yet no physician is willing to give me.”

“That’s horrible,” Ariadne said.

“Of course it is,” said Yusuf. “That, my lady, is empire. So instead I play the clever foreigner, pick their pockets, and tutor spoiled, bored wives. And you.”

Ariadne laughed at that.

“I do my research, I am not burdened by a practice, I have enough to live on…”

“It’s still not fair,” she said.

Yusuf shook his head. “No. But life is far more simple when you ignore what is fair. Don’t ask yourself what should be. Identify what is, and flourish there.”

 

Ariadne _was_ flourishing.

In some very literal ways, to begin with. Two months into her marriage, Mrs. Eames had needed her clothing refitted. Gabriel had made more than one approving joke about her appetites, but the truth was that she had never realized how little hunger for food she had until she was happy. Her Aunt had had Definite Ideas about desserts, so she had tasted few of them, but once he had witnessed her sampling crème patissiere at a party Eames had hired a pastry chef to come in four times a week.

Then there was learning German (when she and Yusuf managed to stay on the subject rather than wandering off into pharmacology), the museums of London, the lectures at the universities, the discovery that married life, as the vicar’s wife had politely called it (so politely in fact that Ariadne had no idea what she really meant until it was too late to ask for details) suited her _quite_ well, and now…

And now Arthur was home.

 

Which brought her back to the orchid she was struggling with. Before his return, she’d had… well, a fantasy of what their life would be like. She thought of this return as a homecoming because, she supposed, she had thought he would come back, settle into the room they had put aside as his, and all would be well. They would resume their old friendship in the much wider sphere now open to them, away from Cobb Manor. The would travel, and share books, and attend  lavish parties, and…

And. That was the part that left her flushed and stammering, even now.

She had loved Arthur since they were children. But it had been impossible. Hopeless. And so she had loved him as a child, his greater age and polish making him an idol in her sight, and one did not give much thought to the specificity of the adoration one offered up to one’s idols. She couldn’t remember if she had ever dreamed of so much as kissing him.

He had been intended for her cousin, and could thus never be anything else to her. She would chant this to herself, even when her throbbing heart and tight chest tried to whisper the truth in her ear.

Now? Now Philippa had eloped. Arthur was free, and living under her roof, and she? She was no longer a girl. It was a terrible, novelistic euphemism, she thought, to say that marriage had made her a woman. She was as much the same _woman_ now that she had been before she married Gabriel. It was just that she _knew_ so much more now. And that knowledge came with a far more precise and specific understanding.

Not to mention a far more… fertile imagination, which had in turn been fed by some terribly surprising volumes from the top shelves of her husband’s library. (She had been curious, and concerned, about her own lack of information, especially when it came to the addition of potential partners into the marital bed. Research seemed to be the natural answer, and she could not understand why Mr. Eames had found this so hilarious.)

In short, she’d had distinct ideas of what would happen when Arthur returned. Hopes, anyway.

And now here he was. And they were still friends. They could speak more easily now, although not as comfortably as she had hoped. She and Arthur had taken in a few lectures and been to several exhibits together, sometimes with Gabriel and sometimes without.

But.

There was still a wall there, between them. It was a different wall, perhaps, and a shorter one. A stranger one, too. Their conversations were still hedged in somehow, and… how could she put it?

She could never determine precisely where to stand.

When they were cousins there was always a respectful distance, after all.

And when she stood next to Gabriel there was almost no space between them. It wasn’t as if she draped herself over him, of course, but they were always within easy reach of each other, and at home were still in the newlywed habit of frequent small caresses.

But now she felt like she and Arthur were in some strange and awkward dance in which they stepped a bit closer then backed away, and never in rhythm.

The night he had first come to their house had been different. It had been… a celebration, sung with mouths and fingertips, and Ariadne thought they had begun as they would go on.

 

Gabriel had known better. After Arthur had drifted off into exhausted lumber they had gone across the hall to their rooms to quickly peel off their clothes and enthusiastically finish what the three of them had only begun. As they lay stretched out on Gabriel’s massive bed (having ended up there at last after a sojourn against the door, on the floor next to the bed, and against the washstand), he had laughed.

“You should have seen his face,” Gabriel said. “’I’m here for Ariadne,’ he said, and I thought John was going to have a stroke.” John was Gabriel’s secretary, and the long suffering man had until then thought himself immune to his employer’s antics.

His arms had tightened around her then, and his voice was a low, almost reluctant rumble in his chest under her ear. “I thought he might really do it.”

“What, carry me off?” she asked, and took his silence for assent. She looked into his face, and his brows were low, his eyes guarded. “Would you have let him?”

The look stayed for a moment before he loosened his grip. “That depends. Would you have forgiven me if I had shot him?”

“Eventually,” she said lightly. “But I think we will find a more civilized way to manage.”

“Quite,” he said. Then his voice lowered again. “Don’t think this will be easy, Ariadne.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever seen what happens to a watch when it’s wound too tight for too long?”

“Arthur isn’t a watch.”

“No, he isn’t,” Gabriel agreed. “But the analogy stands. You saw him tonight, love.  He’s off balance and overwhelmed. It’s going to be difficult for him to…”

“Then we will help him,” Ariadne said.

“We will,”  he said. “I’m just warning you to  be patient, and give him his room. If we’re not careful, he’ll bolt.”

 

And within a few days Arthur had proven her right. He didn’t avoid her, but he didn’t approach her either. He seemed lighter, less lost than he had when he first arrived, but… he didn’t seem found, either.

And she knew the problem.  He was _thinking_ again. It wasn’t that she of all people looked down on intellectual pursuits, or even contemplation. It was that Arthur was trapped in his own thoughts. She could see it, but if he wouldn’t let her in, she had no way to lead him out of it.

 

And just when she had been at the point of despair, her husband had come to her one morning.

 He had been nervous, which immediately unsettled her. She had slept in her own room, as she sometimes did when he was working late. She was working on a piece of tapestry when he came in, still in his shirtsleeves, and he was winding his cravat around his knuckles and unwinding them again, an action that was strangely boyish.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing, exactly,” he said, closing the door behind him and leaning against it.

“That what is it?”

“Arthur came to me last night,” he said.

“What do you mean he…” her voice trailed off as Gabriel tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. Blood flooded her cheeks. “Oh.”

She took a deep breath and repeated, “Oh.”

She was buffeted by an overwhelming array of emotions before settling on one.  “Well. I can’t say that I am surprised.”

 

The look on her husband’s face was, to say the least, gratifying. 


	2. Eames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Ariadne had been an overlooked treasure, Arthur was a puzzle he had not yet solved.

Gabriel Eames had risen to his place in the world primarily by a keen instinct for what was both valuable and underappreciated. It was how he had greatly magnified the wealth his father, a sot if ever there was one, had left him on his early death. It was how, in his wayward days, he had made a great many of his conquests among the neglected wives of the ton. And it was how he had snatched his wife, jewel that she was, out from under her guardians’ noses.

He hadn’t thought of her as an acquisition, or as a conquest. But having resigned himself to the necessity of obtaining a wife, he had thought himself quite lucky to have found one that was beautiful, clever, thoroughly uninterested in the vagaries of London society, and unlikely to cause him much difficulty. So he snatched her up, and, all too unwary, quickly discovered that he was the one who had been caught.

It wasn’t that he pretended at having no heart. He wasn’t that kind of rake. It was merely that no one had caught his interest seriously enough to persist in his heart’s notice for any length of time.  
Until now. And Ariadne.

He would never have predicted that his greatest delight in life would be rising out of bed in the morning to see his wife sewing, of all things. It calmed her, she said, and gave her hands something to do while her mind roamed. She was still in the habit of rising early (a habit he planned on never acquiring himself), so on most mornings he would find her just through their adjoining door, her head bent over her work, a contented half-smile on her face, and the sun casting a golden halo in her hair.

This morning was no different. He kissed Ariadne good morning and said, “Are you coming down to breakfast?”

Her mouth turned down slightly. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Are you well?” he asked. It wasn’t like her to miss a meal. He loved that about her, that her zeal for good food mirrored her enthusiasm for everything else in life.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m just not very hungry. “

The furrow between his brows deepened. “Do you want me to cancel this evening?”

Ariadne, growing up as a poor relation in the country, had never had a coming out. Eames had suggested hosting a ball to introduce her into London society, but she had looked panicked at the suggestion. He had amended it to a large dinner party, and she had agreed.

If you were to ask him why, he would have claimed that he was, after all, a gentleman and would be expected to play host to any number of functions now that he had a hostess. If you were to counter that he more likely wanted an opportunity to show off his new bride, he would have narrowed his eyes and made some response but, being an honest man at heart, would not have denied it.

“No,” she said quickly. “I’ll rest a while, though.”

Once he had dressed, he went downstairs to find Arthur waiting for him. The man had dark circles under his eyes, so Gabriel was compelled to say, “Good morning! Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough,” said Arthur. He looked over Eames’ shoulder. “Is Ariadne coming down?”

“No,” Eames said. If Arthur wasn’t going to be forthcoming, neither was he.

If Ariadne had been an overlooked treasure, Arthur was a puzzle he had not yet solved. At first, he had viewed the other man with contempt: like all the others at Cobb Manor he seemed to treat Ariadne with indifference. That contempt turned to pity when he realized that Arthur’s indifference was a studied one, meant to disguise far deeper feeling. But while he knew the man was tightly laced and even better at hiding his thoughts than Gabriel himself, he remained a mystery.

The mystery had only deepened in the weeks Arthur had been with them. He was not surprised that their guest had become distant. He had seen it before: too much liberty at once became a shock to the system. He could tell that Arthur was adrift, at sea, and they had thrown the rope. What baffled him now was why the damn fool refused to pick it up. Momentary paralysis he could understand, but this was stasis that ran the risk of turning into profound self-pity, and Gabriel was running out of patience for it.

It might have been more tolerable in its way if Arthur had stayed to his room. But he haunted the house like a ghost, trailing Ariadne’s footsteps during the day and Gabriel’s at night. They would play billiards or cards, make tedious small talk, and drink cognac.

Finally, on one such night, he asked, “So what are your plans?”

“What do you mean?” Arthur set down his cards and looked at him.

“You can stay here as long as you like,” said Gabriel. “You can stay here forever. But if you don’t do something, you’ll go mad.”

“I know,” said Arthur. He picked up his cards again, shifted them around in his hands.

“And?” said Gabriel.

“I don’t know,” said Arthur. He said the words to the cards, and reminded Gabriel of nothing so much as a peevish schoolboy who’s been caught out without his lessons done.

“You must have some idea.”

“I don’t.”

“You can do anything. Anything in the whole world.”

“I know that.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know!” There was real anguish in it, and it pained Gabriel to push him further. Not that he was going to let that stop him.

He wondered if this was how a surgeon felt.

“You’ve never thought about it?”

“Never. I was supposed to take over for Dominic. I was… I was supposed to be getting married. I never studied for anything else. I never thought…”

“So you didn’t once dream about running away, or going to school, or travelling, or…”

“That wasn’t our lives, Eames. You wouldn’t understand…”

“No, I wouldn’t. I’ve watched you play the fool, Arthur, and you’re very good at it.”

“Thank you,” Arthur said, and somewhere behind the mounting anger Gabriel was happy to see a spark of sarcasm.

“But you’re not a fool,” Gabriel said. “And even if I couldn’t see it, she does.” That, at least, got a reaction as Arthur’s jaw tightened. “I know there is a great deal more to you than this shade you’ve become. So for god’s sake, man. I understand that…

“No, you don’t,” Arthur almost shouted. He smacked the table with his fist. “You can’t possibly understand. You had choices we never had. You’ve had everything handed to you…”

It was not the first time he’d been struck with an urge to bloody Arthur’s nose. It likely wouldn’t be the last either, but this time he settled for slamming down his glass instead. He stood up and glared down into the other man’s face. “Do you know what I had handed to me? These four walls without a scrap of furniture left inside, a mouldering estate up north that had been farmed into near sterility, and a stack of debtors' notes as high as my head. I’ve built what I’ve got, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to apologize to you for it.” He took a deep breath before adding, “There’s a difference, Arthur, between having no choices and just not liking the choices you’ve got.”

As he turned to leave the drawing room, he called back, “And right now, you can choose whether to be a grown man or a mewling prat.”

He had gone to his study then, too angry to sleep and not wanting Ariadne to see him upset. He’d poured a tall glass and stared into the fire in the grate until there’d been a tapping at his door. When he opened the door he asked, “What do you want?”

And Arthur said, “To choose.”

And kissed him with such force the Gabriel teetered backwards for a second before finding his balance. Once he had regained his footing, he returned the kiss with equal fervor. He tangled one hand in Arthur’s curls while undoing buttons with the other. Arthur returned the favor, and before long waistcoats and shirts were on the rug.

Gabriel took a half step back and looked at Arthur. His eyes were half closed and fixed on the floor, his hands knotted into fists. Gabriel wrapped one arm around his waist to pull him close until their hips met and skin touched bare skin. Arthur whimpered, softly, and Gabriel hesitated. But a moment later Arthur raised his eyes, clasped his hands on both sides of Gabriel’s face, and he broke with delay.

By the time he realized that he would have to tell his wife about this, he was too firmly committed to the venture and found himself unable to withdraw, as it were, without a considerable breach of common courtesy.

That was the first time they fucked, and nothing but the bluntness of the Anglo-Saxon would do. It was far from the last. But while the physical distance between them narrowed they grew no more intimate. And it was maddening.

He could taste Arthur, feel the way the skin was stretched tight between his shoulder blades or soft in the hollows of his hips, feel the way his breath was hot against his neck or hear it hissing between his teeth; he could be inside him, and still feel no closer to solving him. Gabriel could describe the details of Arthur’s hands, fingers long and slender and shockingly deft, wrists fine boned. He’d studied the lines of his cheekbones, the set of his jaw, and the furrow that was set too early between his brows. But he could read very little of what went on behind those eyes. To a man like Gabriel the continuing curiosity only served to increase both his desire and his frustration, and he found himself vacillating with great regularity between a desire to tear Arthur limb from limb and simply tear him out of his clothes.

Which made it all the more nerve-wracking that his wife was able to take it all with such aplomb. When he had awoken after that first night, he’d been on pins and needles. He couldn’t not tell Ariadne what had happened. Even before he’d loved her he’d sworn her his honesty if not his fidelity, and had he not he would still be unable to meet her eyes with such a thing hidden.

But he was not eager to do it. He had gone into her room to find her in her usual spot, his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth and his stomach in knots.

“What’s wrong?” she asked when she saw his face.

“Nothing exactly,” he said. He was dragging his feet, and hating himself for it.

“Then what is it?”

He took a great breath in and said, “Arthur came to me last night.”

Her frown deepened. “What do you mean, he… oh.” She was silent for a moment, then repeated, “Oh.”

He watched as fear, anger, and jealousy spread across her features. His throat tightened, and it had occurred to him in a far more visceral way than it had before: he could lose her over this. There were a thousand ways this could go badly, and it could break them. And he would be left standing. He would survive it, but he shied away from even imagining what the wreckage would look like.

So when Ariadne just blew out a breath and said, “Well, that makes perfect sense,” he felt as if the room had suddenly tilted ninety degrees and left him standing on the walls.

“It does?” he said.

“Of course,” she replied, and went back to her sewing.

He went back into his room, finished dressing, and came back.

“Precisely how does that make sense?”

She continued her imitation of the Mona Lisa just long enough to make him scowl, then said, “When he first came here, he said he wanted to rescue me, yes?”

Gabriel growled. “More or less,” he said.

“I think he’s the one in need of rescue,” she said. She turned her needlework over and snipped a thread, put the work in the basket next to the chair, and stood up. She came over and kissed him. “You’re more the white knight than I am.”

He scowled in mock irritation. “You mistake me, wife. I’m no man’s hero.”

For that matter, if anyone in the household was best suited for gleaming armor, it was Ariadne.

And tonight she would meet the ton. She had awoken shortly before lunch and pronounced herself fully recovered and eager for the dinner. Her eyes were overbright and he could tell by the quickness of her hands and the ruddiness of her cheeks that she was nervous. But when she came down for the evening, dressed in a creamy blue dress with gold braid, she had put on the air of perfect poise.

He was watching her circulate among their guests before dinner when Arthur appeared at his elbow.

“She’s doing well,” Gabriel said, and Arthur gave him an irritated look.

“Of course she is,” he said. “We grew up in the country. Not on a desert island.”

“I only meant…”

“I know what you meant,” Arthur said. A small smile danced on his lips, but it quickly fled, and when Gabriel followed his eyes he saw why.

One of the guests, a tall man of middle age, had been in conversation with Ariadne for several minutes. He had been inching ever closer, and now stood close enough to cause, if not offense, raised eyebrows. By the discomfited expression on her face, Ariadne had noticed, and while she had not yet sought them out for aid Eames felt some action was necessary.

“God damn it,” he said. “Lamberton.”

Arthur crossed her arms and gave a small grunt.

“You see the woman over by the piano?” Gabriel said. “Green dress, chestnut hair?”

“Yes?”

“That’s his mistress. Go flirt with her.”

Arthur’s head snapped around to stare at him. “Pardon me?”

“I can’t do it,” Gabriel said. “These ninnies would love that, flirting with another woman at my wife’s debut. You’ll have to.”

“Should I take her to bed, or just make love to her?”

Gabriel pondered it for half a second before recognizing Arthur’s sarcasm. “I’ll leave that to your discretion,” he said.

Whatever retort the other man had planned was rendered unnecessary when Ariadne, in an act of unwonted clumsiness, spilled her aperitif down Lamberton’s breeches.

“That’s our girl,” Gabriel said, and when he and Arthur both smiled, there was true warmth there.

 

The rest of the evening was a success. Mrs. Eames was deemed charming, her husband pronounced reformed if not fully redeemed by the virtues of his wife, and her handsome (and unmarried!) cousin was invited by several of the gentlemen present (at their wives’ urging) to call at his next opportunity.

While the evening had been thoroughly enjoyed by all it had by no means been a night of wild debauchery, which was why Gabriel was perplexed to find Ariadne again wan and unwell the next morning.

She waved off his concern again. “Too much excitement for one evening,” she said, but this time he was less convinced.

She didn’t come down to dinner that evening, preferring to rest, but claiming to feel better.

But when he woke the next morning to the sound of her being sick into her wash basin, his heart lurched from concerned to alarmed. He held back her hair until the retching stopped, then said, “I’m sending for a doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” she answered, wiping her face with the cloth he had held against her neck.

“Ariadne, you’re ill.”

“I’m not ill,” she said. Then after a hesitation, she said, “But if you must send for someone, ask Yusuf to come.”


	3. Arthur

_Life_ , Arthur considered, _could be inscribed as a curve, life to death. You begin with a straightforward trajectory, like a missile from a gun. But little by little your expected course sways, drawn by events completely out of your control. Events have their own gravity, and while you may give yourself the illusion of individual autonomy, you look back and find that you ordered your path as much as Venus does her track through the sky., pulled hither and yon by sun and sister planets._

He felt encased in ice and as distant from those around him as that star. Which was not to say that he did not feel. If anything, he felt far too much, as the changes his world had undergone threatened to choke and submerge him.

But while he stood frozen, the world continued turning around him, and move or no, events conspired to tilt his course yet again.

****

He heard the bustling that morning in January; heard Eames send for Yusuf, and then heard the man arrive. He had waited in his rooms for a short time, then, worried, gone downstairs.

To find Eames in his study, beaming, and pouring tall glasses of brandy.

Yusef was laughing as he complained, “This is why I have no interest in a practice, my friend. You did not need to drag me out in the cold for this.”

“Hush your tongue and drink,” Eames said, and then Arthur caught his eye. “Cousin,” he said with a wry twist to his lips, “come celebrate with me.”

Arthur was perplexed. “I heard Ariadne was ill…”

Eames and Yusuf looked at each other and laughed. “Not ill,” Yusuf said. “She is… indisposed.”

“I believe the proper expression these days is ‘increasing,’” said Eames.

Arthur wondered how he could joke like that, so casually. It was a wonder. A miracle had happened and here Eames was, laughing and being witty about it all when he should be…

A glass was pushed into his hand and he mouthed the formalities and sipped at it.

He was afraid to drink much these days. He never knew what would slip through.

He was afraid of not drinking, because eventually this whole world inside would consume him.

The spirit’s sharp tang brought his attention back outside, and Yusuf was saying, “Just keep your English doctors away from her and she’ll be fine. Especially no bleeding.” He stared into his cup and scowled. “Barbarians, all. Now, I don’t know what your plans were for the summer months but you’ll want to get her out of the city. It’s not healthy for anyone here in July, much less…”

“You’ll come with us,” Eames said, and it was half question, half assertion.

“Mr. Eames,” Yusuf said, “I have other commitments , and my own…”  

Eames lowered his jaw, and Yusuf quickly added, “which I will have plenty of time to reschedule.”

“I’ll make it worthwhile,” said Eames.

Arthur was astonished, yet again, at how easy everything was for Eames. His every action was effortless: he smiled, he laughed, he made love to the whole room and everyone adored him. He scowled and ordered the world to his bidding. He wanted something and he claimed it, and everyone else simply made way.

He had simply made way.

He could not stop loathing Eames for that. He could not help loathing himself.

He could not stop loving him, either.

Always pulled in two directions: fire and ice, dark and bright, stillness and frenzy. And because he could not choose between either pole he stayed locked inside, a tightly sealed box; one smooth mask showed to the world while the war waged on within. It had been easier, before, when he simply ignored this world behind his eyes. It had been irrelevant and thus unexamined.

But now, he feared, (and oh, he feared) the cracks were starting to show.

****

It was later that afternoon that he found Ariadne. She was in the library on a chaise longue, a red embroidered quilt spread across her lap. She was slowly turning the pages on the large volume she held, a book of botanical prints.

He paused in the doorway to watch her, but he didn’t get away with it long before she looked up and smiled.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. He sat down on the edge of the couch and she curled her legs up to give him room.

“I suppose I ought to get used to being asked that,” she said. “I am well. It’s worst in the morning, and even that won’t be so bad now that I’m certain of why.”

“You knew?” he said.

She gave the little half smile he knew so well, one corner of her mouth turning sweetly up. “I suspected.”

“You’re happy then,” he asked, and inwardly damned himself for it. But she didn’t take offense.

“I am,” she said.

Her hair was in a loose knot, and he watched the way the stray tendrils curled around her ear, not a tight spiral imposed by an iron but a meander from her temple to just above her collarbone.

“Then so am I,” he said, and to his surprise, he meant it. For her sake, if nothing else. And then before he could stop himself he added, “Just keep him close.”

Her eyes grew large, and she covered his hands with her own. “Of course I will,” she said. “Of course.”

Ever after he thought of the coming child as a boy. In later months he would wonder if it was some kind of insight. In later years, he knew better, but by then he had gained the ability to, if not laugh, then smile at his own foibles.

****

Ariadne was abed early that night. After dinner, Arthur joined Eames in his study. The other man was unusually quiet, which Arthur neither much minded nor marked at the first. Nor did he observe that Eames’ glass was filled to near the brim. But when he began to speak, his words came in awkward jolts, and the effect was so incongruous with Arthur’s entire experience of Eames that it took him a few marveling seconds to recognize the emotion at play.

“Do you think Ariadne would want to go back near Cobb Manor?”

Arthur’s only response was an incredulous eyebrow, and Eames said, “That’s what I thought at first too. It’s a stupid idea. But then I wondered if she would want your aunt nearby. Or her mother. But she never speaks of her mother. I can’t imagine…” His voice trailed off before he resumed again. “Sea travel is out. Perhaps she’d like to go north? Derbyshire, perhaps, or the seaside…”

Arthur wanted to laugh. He’d never thought to see Eames anxious. But he repressed the urge and said, “You could ask her.”

Eames snorted. “Yes, I could at that.” He stood up and poked the fire, then stood, staring at the dancing flames.

Arthur studied his outline, framed by firelight. It was a striking image, painted in fire and shadow: broad shoulders tapering to hips, arm resting on the mantel. Arthur reflected that his envy was becoming a comfortable pair of shoes.

“I’m going to make a terrible mess of this,” said Eames.

“Of what?” asked Arthur. He was taken aback.

“Fatherhood,” said Eames. His voice cracked, a slip he tried - and failed - to cover with a chuckle and a heavy draught from his glass. “I am going to be,” he said slowly, “an absolute fucking disaster.”

“Eames…”

“This must be final proof that there is no God. Or that he’s insane. How else could this have happened?”

“I sincerely hope that’s a rhetorical question,” said Arthur. “Otherwise, I have grave concerns about…”

“The best thing my father ever did for me was die,” Eames went on. “God, he had a temper. I was terrified of the bastard, at least until I was taller than he was. What if I’m…”

Concern finally overcame shock and propelled Arthur to his feet. “You won’t be,” he said.  

“I don’t know how to do this,” Eames said.

Arthur put both hands on Eames’ shoulders. “That’s why you don’t have to do it alone.” Eames sagged, and Arthur rested his forehead against the other man’s. “You’ve never failed at anything yet. We’re not going to let you start now.”

He kissed him softly. Then, as he felt Eames pulling himself together, he clapped him on the shoulder. “Besides, I’m fairly certain your part of it is done for at least the next year.”

********  
  


Later in the night, alone,, he pondered the strange alchemy that would transmute envy and contempt into an uneasy friendship. Especially when desire was fueling the furnace.

That was a knot within himself he hadn’t dared pick at. After all, falling in love with Ariadne had been just that, falling. It was unavoidable, but not inexplicable.

Falling in love with Eames, on the other hand, had been another in a series of contradictions. From their first meeting he had found him physically beautiful, yes, but morally repugnant. He admired Eames, and resented him, and in time came to appreciate being challenged by someone even while he wished at times the man was less interested in dissecting him.

But after that night the apparent conflict began to resolve itself. He discovered that he had confused the player for the part and the mask for the face underneath. He of all people, Arthur chided himself, should have seen that. But Eames was like an optical illusion: if you saw through the trick once it was easy to see how it was done. After that, their interactions felt less like vivisections and more like fencing.

Which didn’t stop Eames from occasionally stabbing the rapier in to see if he would wince. Especially in the first weeks of Ariadne’s pregnancy. Arthur couldn’t tell if it was anxiety over fatherhood or a need to rebalance the scales after Arthur had seen him in a moment of weakness, but either way, Arthur was beginning to feel like a pin cushion.

It was three nights later, for example, that he was in the process of undoing a row of buttons when Eames had leaned forward and breathed into his ear, “Is this about her?”

When Arthur ignored the bait,  he went on.”You’re peeling off my clothes, but really, aren’t you wondering? What sounds she makes…”

“Shut up, Gabriel,” he had said, and urged him onto his knees. When possible, the best remedy was to give that tongue something else to do.

Before their words could fully unlock the images his mind tried to hold back.

As if he had to wonder. As if his room wasn’t just across the  hall.  As if he hadn’t stood outside their suite, one fist clenched and the other twitching to grab the doorknob.

But that was the Rubicon. And at least for now, he was still standing on the shore.

****

Then again, perhaps the issue was merely one of opportunity. Ariadne was usually asleep shortly after dinner, leaving the two men to amuse themselves. Some nights they went their separate ways, some nights they went to Eames’ club, and some nights they stayed in.

On one February night, it was too cold to go out and too early to turn in, and so billiards it was.

Arthur had leaned over the table, cue in hand, and Eames waited until he had committed to the shot before saying “So, tell me, why haven’t you bedded my wife yet?”

Arthur’s cue skidded off the ball and left chalk marks across the table. Eames chuckled and puffed on a cigar.

“Excuse me?” Arthur asked.                                   

“You heard me,” Gabriel said. “Unless she’s hiding something from me, which I very much doubt…”

“Of course she isn’t,” Arthur said.

“Then what is the problem? Don’t looked shocked. It doesn’t fit well with our situation.”

“I see no need for haste,” Arthur said. He tried not to squirm: it would only make it a thousand times worse.

“Perhaps,” said Gabriel, “but I know delay when I see it. I just want to know why.”

“Does it matter?”

Gabriel ignored that. “I know she’s willing. I’m surprised she hasn’t taken matters into her own hands.”

Arthur scowled and began to set up the shot again.

“You can’t think I’d mind,” said Gabriel.

Arthur waited until he’d taken the shot before saying, drily, “If I had any doubts on that account, they’re gone now.”

Eames went on. “It can’t be that you have an objection to adultery or you wouldn’t end up in my bed as often as you do.” When Arthur didn’t respond, Eames took his turn at the table. He thought for a moment, then said, frowning, “You know, some men find, upon some… experimentation that they lose interest in…”

He trailed off as Arthur stared at him. “Well, it can happen.”

Arthur said, “My dear Mr. Eames, I’ll grant that your skills are considerable. However, they are not such that they would cause me to forsake the attentions of women ever after.”

No wonder he had such broad shoulders, Arthur thought. He needed the extra room to contain his ego.

“Well, then, what is it? I’m willing, she’s willing…I’d known you for all of fifteen minutes before I could see how badly you wanted her.”

Arthur winced at that. The idea that he was so transparent to the world terrified him in ways he could not articulate. The idea that he was so transparent only to Gabriel was worse.

“So unless that has changed…” Eames said.

“No,” Arthur said quickly. Too quickly. He sighed. “I was afraid there would be… complications.”

Eames frowned. “Such as?”

“Let us just say that it is a concern that no longer troubles me.”

Eames frown deepened. “I don’t follow. What has changed that…” His frown turned to comprehension, followed by mirth, which was in turn followed by loud guffaws.

Arthur did not share his amusement. “You think this a small thing?”

Eames found that funnier. “Small indeed.”

“Your firstborn, her firstborn,” Arthur said, “is your heir. Are you going to tell me that the idea of another man’s child inheriting your estate, your father’s estate, doesn’t trouble you?”

“No!” exclaimed Eames. “I think it hilarious. In fact I’m sorry I didn’t think of it sooner. The old man would have been looking up from hell and howling more loudly than ever.” Arthur still did not share his amusement, so he tamped it down.

“So that’s really it, then?”

“That’s really it,” Arthur said.

“Then I’m glad the matter is settled,” Eames said. “Life is short, Arthur, and some things are too precious to let pass us by.”

Arthur filed that piece of information away. Eames could be deceived. You just had to find a lie close enough to the truth.

****

After that, Gabriel had dropped the matter, mercifully. If nothing else, Ariadne felt too unwell for amorous pursuits to be an option. But Arthur did spend a great deal of time with her. Gabriel’s business kept him occupied in the mornings, so when Ariadne felt at her worst he would read to her, or simply keep her company, or (mercifully, only once) hold her hair back and commiserate with her as she was sick.

But that season passed as well, and soon it was early spring. The roses came back into Ariadne’s cheeks as the snowdrops burst through the garden soil, and she was much herself again. If, as the expression went, somewhat increased from previously. But as she was still trim enough for decent appearance in public, they resumed socializing.

Thus it was that they found themselves at the Herefords' card party. It was not Arthur’s favorite form of event, as he neither much enjoyed gambling with incompetents or gossiping with the insipid, but Eames thoroughly loved the former and Ariadne had a patience for the latter he couldn’t quite understand.

At least not until she came over to him and Eames after dinner, laughter dancing in her eyes.

“You’ve made quite the impression,” she told Arthur.

“What’s he done now?” Gabriel asked.

“Mrs. Breely just informed me that she was quite envious of my having such a handsome cousin in residence,” she said.

Arthur hoped the scowl into his drink would cover his blush.

Having studied her husband’s technique, Ariadne waited until he had raised the cup to his lips to say, “And then she asked me if Gabriel was a heavy sleeper.”

Gabriel’s mouth twisted in a smirk, and while Arthur fought off the coughing fit he asked, “What did you tell her?”

“I told her you were, but only when I had spent several hours thoroughly exhausting you.”

“Well, that should do the trick,” Gabriel said.

****

The evening wore on, and Ariadne began to flag. Enough so that Gabriel waved Arthur over to the table where he was cleaning out his host’s pockets. Without looking up from his hand, he said, “Cousin, Mrs. Eames looks positively exhausted. Take her home and to bed, would you?” He looked up and gave Arthur a long look.

“Of course,” Arthur said smoothly.

As he turned to leave, he heard Mr. Hereford say, laughing, “I hope he didn’t mistake your meaning.”

“I certainly hope not,” Gabriel said.  “It would upset my household arrangements terribly.”

****

Ariadne was entirely ready to leave, and so it was only a short while later that they were both comfortably seated opposite each other in the carriage and homeward bound.

Arthur watched her a moment, once they were underway, the shifting patterns of moonlight and gas lamp across her face as they drove down the street. But after the silence had stretched out she asked, “Did you enjoy yourself this evening?”

“I love you,” he said.

He watched her face as if it were a scrying mirror, saw surprise pass over it, and a split second’s confusion, before it softened and a slow, sweet smile spread across it. She said nothing in response, nor did he add any words.

What more could be necessary?

Instead, Ariadne stretched out her hand, and he took it, held between his own  He looked down at it then, covered in fine white kidskin. Her hands were so small, and fleetingly some voice babbled in the back of his mind over the idea of glovers, and how tiny the stitches must be to make them invisible in a pair like this, and before he could get to wondering about the manufacture of needles small and yet sharp enough for the leather he banished that and all other rational thoughts to their chambers for the rest of the evening. He turned her hand over and ran a thumb up her arm, following the line of buttons to her elbow, and began undoing them one at a time until he could slide the long evening glove off. He laid it over his knee and studied the skin underneath, even softer than the kid.

Her hands were not unfamiliar, not after so many years’ acquaintance. But he had never examined them so closely nor so openly as he did now. They were softer than he remembered, now that she was free from regular chores, but not flawless. She had a writer’s callous, of course, and he suppressed a laugh at the soil under one fingernail. She must have been working in the conservatory before they had gone out. There was the scar across the knuckle on the third finger of her right hand from where she had cut it in the stillroom at sixteen. Arthur turned her hand over, raised it to his lips, and pressed a kiss into her palm.

A shiver went through Ariadne, and her breath caught in her throat. When Arthur raised his eyes her own were already heavy lidded. He held on to her hand but sat back, afraid to touch her further.

If he did, he feared they would never make their way out of the coach.

It was a mercifully short drive that nevertheless seemed to last forever. When they reached the house he followed her in; coat and cloak were left with the yawning doorman, who did his job admirably but was relieved to hear that neither valet nor maid would be needed for the rest of the evening. Arthur followed her up the stairs, but upon reaching the landing took her by the hand and led her wordlessly to his room.

The fire was still burning in the grate. He noted with little surprise that his hands were shaking when he lit one candle, then another, and then another. Ariadne waited until he was done and had turned back to her.

“Say it again,” she implored.

“I love you,” he said. He stepped forward and cupped her face in both his hands and kissed her again, drawing out the lingering sweetness. He turned her slowly until she was facing away from him.

“I love you,” he said again, and now the dam was breaking and words were beginning to flood out and he had somewhere between the party and home lost any desire to stop them. He drew the fichu out of her bodice and began to kiss his way down the back of her neck, interspersing words and caresses as her head lolled forward.

“I love you. I want you. I have wanted you for as long as I’ve known what wanting was.” And now he was undoing the fastenings down her back, and in another moment her dress was a cloud of white silk pooled around her feet. She lifted off her busk as she turned back to him.

“I should have told you years ago,” he said. “I should have told you last week. I should have…”

She put a stop to his confession with her lips, winding her arms around his neck to pull him closer. As his tongue softly explored her lips his fingers worked at her stays, and in another rain of fabric and petticoats she stood in only her chemise. And after another increasingly breathless moment she untied the laces on that as well.

He stepped back then to look at her, see her for the first time. Her skin glowed like the moon in the candlelight, and while he realized he was staring she stood there as calm and regal as a queen. He was almost afraid to touch her, but, refusing to let that fear seize hold again he ran his fingertips up her arms and down her sides, caressing the softening curves from newly-heavy breasts to hips.

“You are… so profoundly beautiful,” he said, and while he stood there almost hypnotized she unbuttoned his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, sliding them off his shoulders. He shivered as her hands touched his bare skin, but ice turned to fire when she kissed him again and her breasts pressed against his chest.

He couldn’t decide where to start, then, where to put his hands, where to taste first, what to tell her, but Ariadne again took matters into her own hands. Perhaps recognizing his perplexity, she broke away only long enough to say, “The bed, Arthur,”and hitched one leg up so that he could lift her out of the sea of discarded clothing.

He laid her down he began kissing her breasts before rasping his teeth over her nipple. When he did she cried out and bucked her hips, and the thin grasp he was maintaining on his sanity attenuated to a fine thread. His lips and tongue traversed the impossible softness of her belly to the curls between her legs, and then his lips parted hers and he tasted her salt, and she cried out again, more loudly, as she wound her fingers into his hair, and he was torn between a desire to keep kissing her until she spent and a desperate need bordering on great pain to be inside her. And then she cried out again and shuddered, and he disposed of the rest of his clothing as quickly as he could without tripping and lay down beside her. And then there was nothing between them and they moved together, her legs circling his waist and his face buried in her throat. And then, and then, and then…

For once, there was no thought.

Hours later, he watched her, hair and arms spread out across the sheets like a child floating in a pond. She slept deeply, lips barely parted, breath rhythmic, her brow smooth and unmarred by dreaming. He fought it himself, barely able to keep his eyes open as languor tried to lure him down with her. But he kicked back against it, unwilling to let this moment go.

He had slept long enough. Years, in fact, and now awake he would not drift off again.

Not when there was so little time left.


End file.
